Important - Some people got automatically redirected to Facebook from MMO-Champion for a couple of minutes. Nothing compromised or anything like that, this is happening all over the web.

WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers
Activision Blizzard's press release states that World of Warcraft is down to 9.6 million subscribers as of December 31, 2012. This is lower than the amount of subscribers from the "over 10 million" announced for Q3 2012. A few other interesting points:

Mists of Pandaria was the #3 best-selling PC game at retail.

Diablo III was the #1 best-selling PC game at retail, breaking PC-game sales records with more than 12 million copies sold worldwide through December 31, 2012.

I love how no one in here is saying "wow is dead" - and yet there are so many saying "Too all you "Wow is dead" sayers:" posts

WoW is DEAD!!! - yw. lets think about it though, if it was actually 'dead' that would mean an mmo with say 500k subs would have died roughly 19 times compared to wow its good to see D3 doing well but the subs are realisticly getting a bit jumpy with each quarter but its and improvement to cata's numbers, so maybe it will begin to grow again

WoW is DEAD!!! - yw. lets think about it though, if it was actually 'dead' that would mean an mmo with say 500k subs would have died roughly 19 times compared to wow its good to see D3 doing well but the subs are realisticly getting a bit jumpy with each quarter but its and improvement to cata's numbers, so maybe it will begin to grow again

Its not a improvement to cata's numbers.

Because at the start of cata there was 12.5mil subs.

Even MOP first Quarter and Cata First Quarter sub drop is nearly the same maybe MOP's is slightly less "can't remember cata's number right off hand"

But like what was said at the start of cata also plays to MOP.

If subs are dropping in Q1 for MOP there will be sub lose or barely any gain for the rest of MOP.

Send the nubs to LFR is not quite working ye.... Sadly BLizz has locked so many players out of normal raids based on difficulty thats its total disgrace. And their answer....? NERF the content AFTER 5.2....

Less than 3% of the playerbase have finished NORMAL mode raid content. Thats how badly the game is overtuned and pointless atm.

Now show me what % of the raiding playerbase has completed normal content.

44% success on 10 - 40% on 25, I'm going to suggest a lot more than 3% of the people raiding have completed normal content.

Less than 1% of the player base ever saw naxx 40 as current content, just for a little bit of perspective for you.

Ok first off those numbers are useless. Thats not a success rate of guilds its a wipe vs kill rate. So 40% basically just means that people are wiping 2-3 times per time they kill it. Though again really people wipe more at the beginning so that number is going to trend higher the longer its out.

But you aren't wrong. according to http://www.wowprogress.com/ it looks like 29% of guilds have cleared all normal modes and about 1% Heroic clear. Which sounds about where it should be.

Depending on where the sub loss came from, it could be a huge loss. That chart is out of date, but I'm betting there are less subs in the West simply because there is less of a population overall. If the West population (estimated) dipped down to around 3-4 million in 2012, then losing 500k players could be considered a huge loss, that would be roughly 15% of the population. This is no surprise to me considering the state that some servers are currently in in WoW.

How the hell does that boring hole of Golden Lotus dailies actually tell a story lol , only thing remotely worth doing is Shieldwall.

It definitely does tell a story. You have to defend and secure your home base which is the Vale before you can go out and help in other areas like with the Shado-Pan, Celestials, and Shieldwall. It all made perfect sense and was part of the overall story.

---------- Post added 2013-02-08 at 08:20 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Moshrag

Subs going up again with new content in 5.2 like it allways was....9.6 million subs...theres not one game out there who had ever this amount of subs.....

I agree that there will be an increase when 5.2 goes live. It's looking like it's going to be the most awesome patch ever.

As you can clearly see, they count WoW East in their total. Unless somehow after they stopped releasing the subdivision, WoW West doubled instantly.

Very interesting graph there. By following it, we can safely estimate that the Western subscriptions (EU + US) are now around 3-3.5 millions. Not that impressive, considering that GW2 released only on the Western market so far (EU + US) and already sold more than 3 millions copies, with active concurrent players on the servers steadily increasing after launch (there was a developer statement recently about that). This means that within the Western world WoW is still the most popular MMO, but not by a great margin. After all, we are in February and Blizzard has still to release its SECOND content patch for MoP, while during the same timeframe others MMOs FREE of subscription fee released much more content.

I get it, many people still play WoW because they are attached to it, they are expert at playing it, they have friends in it. But as a matter of fact it is an old game which asks for money every month and offers less content than free games for it: with new free MMOs on the horizon, if Blizzard doesn't change it's approach, the decline is inevitable.
Unfortunately the players who are bliding defending Blizzard ongoing approach are just contributing to that decline. You should be rather questioning them and pushing them to offer you more. But you don't. That's sad for this once wonderful and unparalled game...

I dont think theres anything blizz can do at this point if subs drop after 5.2. Mop is amazing, and if subs drop during it ,then i fear its not the xpac, but rather wows age killing it. I still think it will be around for another 10 years though.

---------- Post added 2013-02-09 at 04:15 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Merp

Very interesting graph there. By following it, we can safely estimate that the Western subscriptions (EU + US) are now around 3-3.5 millions. Not that impressive, considering that GW2 released only on the Western market so far (EU + US) and already sold more than 3 millions copies, with active concurrent players on the servers steadily increasing after launch (there was a developer statement recently about that). This means that within the Western world WoW is still the most popular MMO, but not by a great margin. After all, we are in February and Blizzard has still to release its SECOND content patch for MoP, while during the same timeframe others MMOs FREE of subscription fee released much more content.

I get it, many people still play WoW because they are attached to it, they are expert at playing it, they have friends in it. But as a matter of fact it is an old game which asks for money every month and offers less content than free games for it: with new free MMOs on the horizon, if Blizzard doesn't change it's approach, the decline is inevitable.
Unfortunately the players who are bliding defending Blizzard ongoing approach are just contributing to that decline. You should be rather questioning them and pushing them to offer you more. But you don't. That's sad for this once wonderful and unparalled game...

MoP has more content at launch then nearly all of cata not counting the 1-60 revamp. I think the speed of content is fine.

Oh come on! So many haters here! It's only 500k subscribers down quarterly for the past year.

What side are you on? Because 1. you mention the haters which makes me think you're on the pro-wow side, but then 2. you emphasize QUARTERLY which only serves to highlight that wow lost 500k subs in 3 months rather than 12 months...

I'd actually play MoP again if they had some kind of F2P option. As WoW is right now being an 8 year old game with a great amount of content. I still can't warrant paying money for it. I quit after Cata to come back now would cost me $45 bucks. 30 for MoP and 15 for one month (wait come to think of it you can only buy a card from a store in 2 months so we'll make it 60 bucks. I'm not rich but I'm not poor either. I can't warrant paying 60 bucks up front for a game that's 8 years old (occupied all of 8 of my years). I love WoW dearly but the cost is against me. Not to mention that my guild I played with moved to another server. That's another 25 bucks out of my pocket... So 85 bucks to come back and play an 8 year old game... I'll stick to GW2, SWTOR, and my XBL. (Before anyone says it XBL is 60 bucks A YEAR.) I can definitely afford that.

As soon as they do another Scroll of Resurrection like they did in Cata that allows me to XFER to a friends server and all that stuff. I'm on board. I think a lot of people are in the same place as I am with the cost. WoW is a great game. Hell it's one of the best MMO's I've ever played but it's not worth the money being asked. Many free games have shown that you can make a great game with a lot of content without a sub fee. That's not to say I want it removed, a lowered cost would be great. After 8 years, it just seems right to me. (shrug)

I fear the game will continue to decline though as many Annual passes will be up and there isn't much incentive for people to re-sub.

I'd actually play MoP again if they had some kind of F2P option. As WoW is right now being an 8 year old game with a great amount of content. I still can't warrant paying money for it. I quit after Cata to come back now would cost me $45 bucks. 30 for MoP and 15 for one month (wait come to think of it you can only buy a card from a store in 2 months so we'll make it 60 bucks. I'm not rich but I'm not poor either. I can't warrant paying 60 bucks up front for a game that's 8 years old (occupied all of 8 of my years). I love WoW dearly but the cost is against me. Not to mention that my guild I played with moved to another server. That's another 25 bucks out of my pocket... So 85 bucks to come back and play an 8 year old game... I'll stick to GW2, SWTOR, and my XBL. (Before anyone says it XBL is 60 bucks A YEAR.) I can definitely afford that.

As soon as they do another Scroll of Resurrection like they did in Cata that allows me to XFER to a friends server and all that stuff. I'm on board. I think a lot of people are in the same place as I am with the cost. WoW is a great game. Hell it's one of the best MMO's I've ever played but it's not worth the money being asked. Many free games have shown that you can make a great game with a lot of content without a sub fee. That's not to say I want it removed, a lowered cost would be great. After 8 years, it just seems right to me. (shrug)

I fear the game will continue to decline though as many Annual passes will be up and there isn't much incentive for people to re-sub.